


Falling Doesn't Hurt

by Saintly_Bovine



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Introspection, Past Child Abuse, Past Injury, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-29 03:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30149988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saintly_Bovine/pseuds/Saintly_Bovine
Summary: Sitting in a corner in the same tavern that the damned journey began in, Jaskier did as his former companion normally did: he brooded.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	Falling Doesn't Hurt

**Author's Note:**

> It's been exactly one year since I met my first real friend. (I met her in the YouTube comment section of all places). It was the loneliest time of my life. Through her, I was able to connect to several wonderful people and communities, and because of that, I kept my sanity throughout quarantine. I would have completely lost it, otherwise. And because she encouraged my writing, I'm able to present this, my very first fanfic. So, this is for you Lana. (I realize the content is a bit depressing, but this is the single plot bunny my garbage brain birthed, lol.)

Sitting in a corner in the same tavern that the damned journey began in, Jaskier did as his former companion normally did: he brooded.

A small voice (one that sounded suspiciously like himself whenever he tried to cheer Geralt), pointed out that at least he got out alive, unlike many of the Reavers, or that idiot, Sir what’s-his-name. 

Though not like he personally was in much danger, seeing as how he got left behind by everyone that _fine_ morning. (And one of those ‘everyone’s’ hurt a lot more than the others). Honestly, it was just rude that no one even bothered to wake him. Did they really think he was a threat to their quest? He’s a bard, for gods’ sake! While he is fairly proficient with the dagger he keeps hidden in his boot, he’s no match for three teams of well-trained and fully-armed warriors. Or a dragon, for that matter.

No, Jaskier’s treasure requires more patience. The adventure itself was the down payment for the reward, regardless of who won. 

(To be honest, on this last adventure, he was hoping to win something else entirely than money or adventure. If he had succeeded, the rest wouldn’t have mattered. But instead, he ended the journey with far less than he started.)

Adventures must be smelted, and their stories extracted. Then those stories must be forged into ingots of poetry, and shaped into ornaments of songs, and set in chassises of music, then polished repeatedly to a shine. And then they must be shared _just so_ in order to be profitable.

Jaskier can carve, mould, spin, brew, gild, polish, and sell his wares better than most. 

It is a craft, and Jaskier is a master craftsman.

But the details of this tale were not for others to hear. 

Not that he didn’t have material to work with. Far from it. But some tales are too personal to tell.

Now, all good artists put some of themselves in their works. But it is one thing to implant some emotion into a composition, and another thing entirely to carve out one’s entire heart to put on display. And Jaskier was not about to put his entire being at the judgement of a crowd.

So now, here he was, at the most secluded table in the tavern, mechanically consuming some lovely stew and ale that he barely registered passing his lips. The dwarves had paid for the meal as thanks for promising to not reveal the true happenings on the mountaintop. (Not that he fully understood either. He wasn’t there for a good chunk of it, and a certain unnamed someone was more generous with cutting insults than details.) 

Said dwarves were having the time of their lives, having won the money, land and honor without doing anything more than hiking up a mountain. Not that that’s the story they were telling. Someone was standing on the table (bringing him to slightly above average height) telling a dramatic tale of adventure and betrayal and dragon fights and whatnot, that, again, Jaskier barely registered. Normally, something like this would be right up his alley. He could stoke a crowd into frenzy on a good day, with a full purse and a lovely bed partner by the end to show for it. 

But today? 

No. Just. No. 

For the first time, he wished he was in one of those shitty backwoods taverns, with bland food and watery ale and stale air and hard beds; the kind he normally complained incessantly about. He wanted a more immediate misfortune to focus on, one that others around him would understand. Or maybe someone with a bad enough attitude that Jaskier could justify starting a fight with.

Instead, everyone was in a fantastic mood, and all of his immediate needs were taken care of rather nicely, frustratingly leaving him with no one to commiserate with, and nothing to distract himself from his thoughts.

He was tired, and miserable, and the loud celebration surrounding him was grating at his nerves, but he was too exhausted to get up and leave. His feet ached and he itched with the dust of the road. 

_At least my outfit is fine_ , he absently thought, before realizing he could probably never wear it again without feeling this horrid ache in his chest.

_So this is how it all lands_ , he thought.

He had been falling for so long.

\----------

When Jaskier was 10, he broke his foot.

Or rather, when Julian was 10, he broke his foot.

Though if you asked Jaskier, it was his older brother Lanan who caused the whole foot-breaking incident.

But if you asked Lanan, it was entirely the fault of gravity.

And if you asked their father, the blame rests on Julian himself.

Regardless of who - or what - is the guilty party, Julian Pancratz was 10 years old when his foot broke due to unusual circumstances.

Or perhaps not so unusual, considering the sorts of stupid things prepubescent and teenage boys get up to when unsupervised.

The problem began, much like many problems, because Julian was bored. Normally, Julian avoided Lanan, knowing that he could be unpleasant, but Julian’s boredom was so complete that he wasn’t really thinking about possible consequences.

Julian followed his brother and his group of friends at a distance for the entire morning, not wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be within easy catching range, lest they tie him to a tree and leave him again.

In the heat of the afternoon, the older boys congregated at the swimming hole. The swimming hole was a man-made pond that was dug a few generations ago. It branched off of the river, and the trees planted around it were now fully grown.

There was a certain tree that grew right at the edge, and a particular limb that extended just over the pond, so that whoever climbed the tree could jump off of the branch and land in the water. It was a very popular place for older children to meet and play.

Lanan and his friends stripped naked, and made a game of seeing who could jump the farthest out in the pond, while Julian stayed a little ways off, pants and shirt sleeves rolled up, wading in the stream that fed the swimming hole. It wasn’t as fun alone, but eventually Julian lost himself in digging little mud channels in the bank, catching tadpoles, and racing leaves downstream, while the hooting and hubbub of his brother’s friends faded to the background.

Julian didn’t realize how far downstream he had wandered until a hand wrapped around his ankle and yanked back. He fell forward. He mostly caught himself with his hands - the debris at the bottom scraping his palms - but he still caught a face full of cool water. 

Soaked, sputtering, and indignant (and embarrassed that he had lost his awareness), he clumsily got up, more upset than hurt, only to be tackled back down by three boys at once.

Jaskier doesn’t remember the exact sequence of events that led to him being in the tree, only that it involved a lot of goading, dunking, teasing, and threatening. They wanted to see how far he could jump. Or rather, they wanted to see how far he couldn’t jump, and then make fun of him for it. And even if he did manage to out-jump the others, they’d tell his mother that Julian was playing in the tree that he wasn’t allowed in. There was no way to win, so Julian’s best hope was to play along, get teased, escape, and be done with it.

So. Julian was in the tree, feet on the limb, arms clinging to the rough trunk. He had gotten this far before, when he had snuck off alone to do things he wasn’t supposed to do, as one does. The top of the limb was much smoother than the rest, worn down by years of adventurous boys climbing about on it. There was a nice sturdy branch at about face level off to the left, so Julian grabbed it, and moved his feet farther down the limb. The spot he held was also smooth, eroded by the many boys before him doing exactly as he did. He hadn’t been able to reach that branch last time he tried. He was farther than he had ever been before.

The boys were still jeering.

The cleared tunnel of leaves and branches gave an unimpeded view of the end of the limb, and of the swimming hole below. The end of the limb didn’t have any small branches or leaves, and Julian wondered if they had cut off the end of the limb, or if it had broken off from overuse. (Julian suspected the latter, as the young men were not the best at planning ahead.)

Lanan followed him up the tree to have a better view, and was standing behind Julian on the same limb. Lanan yelled at him for being slow, and shoved Julian forward. Julian lurched and stumbled, desperately trying to balance, stopping himself at the end of the limb by grabbing onto a few tufts of leaves off to his sides. Never was any person in history ever so thankful for a handful of greenery that weighed less than the hair on their head.

The only way out was down. Julian carefully let go of the leaves and balanced, preparing to jump. He stayed that way for a few seconds, making sure he was fully stable.

“Oh come **ON**!” Lanan yelled impatiently, then bounced on the limb as hard as he could. The limb was thick and barely moved, but that barely is all it took.

Julian teetered, flailed, and tipped over.

He fell.

Julian had fallen many times in his life, from tripping down stairs, to tipping too far back in chairs.

None of them felt like this. He had dreamed of falling a few times in his life, and it did feel much like this. (How he could accurately dream about something he had never experienced before was a mystery that he occasionally wondered about.)

It felt a little like flying. But mostly it felt like falling. Understandable, considering that that is exactly what was happening.

A blur of leaves passed upward. A burst of water made its way up his nose when he hit the surface of the pond, and his leg jerked oddly, followed by pain in his foot. 

Julian had mostly fallen in the water, but his foot had hit land.

Through the pain and panic, Julian managed to make it up on the bank.

Jaskier couldn’t remember his own reaction, only that it was severe enough for the boys to grab their clothes and scatter, not wanting to be near the crime scene.

One of his pant legs was ripped, from where it had caught on a branch on the way down. (Before he had climbed up, he considered the pros and cons of stripping naked versus keeping his clothes on. He had considered taking his clothes off to prevent something like this from happening, but he didn’t want to risk the boys stealing his clothes and forcing him to walk home naked. Again).

Julian found one of the sturdy sticks that the boys had been playing with, and used it for walking back home. Each step on his injured foot, even with the stick taking most of the weight, hurt. He focused; step, shuffle, step, shuffle, step, shuffle, until he was home.

Father told him to tough it out. Mother, upon seeing the swelling and bruising, sent for the local barber-surgeon. Lanan (clothed by now), wandered in oh-so-casually, and expressed (feigned) surprise at Julian’s injury. 

Wet and mud-spattered as he was, it was obvious how he was injured. Mother yelled at him for disobeying.

He carefully changed into dry clothes. 

The barber-surgeon arrived, examined Julian, and determined at least one bone in the foot broken. Julian’s foot was set, wrapped, and splinted. The barber-surgeon wrote out instructions, and left.

Mother continued to berate Julian for his disobedience, with Father occasionally chiming in in support. Julian tried to defend himself, telling how Lanan and his friends forced him up then pushed him down, but Lanan denied everything.

Lanan’s clothes were dry, so Julian couldn’t prove anything.

(Looking back, Jaskier realized Mother was more upset about the disobedience than the injury.)

Once Mother finally exhausted herself, she left.

Father was quiet. Lanan was smug. Julian was lying on his bed, numb.

Father broke the silence.

“So, did you push Jules out of the tree?”

Lanan was no longer smug. Both boys waited to see what father would say next, Lanan fearfully, and Julian hopefully.

“I don’t care what your mother says”, Father declared, finally rising from the chair he had been watching the proceedings from. “Thirteen is old enough to climb a damn tree. And I know you were there, Lanan. There’s mud on the back of your knee.” 

Lanan, perched on top of Julian’s desk, did some hurried contorting, and confirmed that, indeed, there was some dried mud splattered on the back of his pants.

Lanan began to sputter out a defense, but Father interrupted and severely asked, “So. Did you push him?”

“YES!”

“NO!”

“He pushed me!”

“I didn’t even touch him!”

“He-“ no, that’s right, Lanan didn’t actually touch him “-wiggled the branch!”

As soon as he said it, Julian knew it was a poor choice of words. ‘Wiggled’ was probably the weakest thing he could have said.

“Wiggled the branch, eh? I thought he pushed you.”

“He…“ Father fixed his gaze straight on Julian, and he felt his argument wither.

“He broke my foot,” Julian insisted feebly.

“Your foot broke of entirely natural causes,” Lanan, confidence returning, decreed.

“What?!” Julian cried. How could the argument spin so quickly out of his reach? 

Father merely raised an eyebrow, signaling Lanan to continue.

“…Gravity’s natural, innit?”

Father snorted in amusement.

What? Unbelievable. This wasn’t a joke!

Mustering up the last bit of courage, Julian countered, “Ok, fine. I fell, it hurt me, and it’s his fault.”

“That’s not true,” Lanan immediately retorted. “Falling doesn’t hurt.”

After a beat, with the air of someone dealing a winning blow, Lanan casually (smugly) declared:

“Falling doesn’t hurt. It’s that sudden stop at the bottom that gets you.”

A pause. Then Father laughed. He laughed like it was the best joke he had ever heard. And Julian, upset, exhausted, and in pain, had nothing to say. What could he say? Father had made up his mind.

With much back slapping and eye wiping, Father and Lanan made their way to Julian’s door. And just when they were walking out, Father turned back and called over his shoulder, “You leave Lanan alone. He has better things to do with his time than to babysit you.”

They left. Julian heard them chuckling as they walked down the hall. They didn’t close his door all of the way. Julian couldn’t get up to close it, so he had to make sure that when the tears came, he shed them quietly.

\----------

“Bard! How about some music, eh?” 

Jaskier jerked from his memory at the sound of Zigrin’s voice.

Music? At a time like this?

Couldn’t they tell that Jaskier’s world had temporarily ended? No doubt he would be fine eventually, he was in no true danger, but right now…

Just as he often wished to see inside the mind of Ger- others, he now wished that others could see inside of him, so that they could understand him, to feel the magnitude of his inner self, without him having to say a word at all.

Music was a good way of communicating, but maudlin songs would not be well-received in the festive atmosphere. He could try to find a sympathetic ear to rant to, but he didn’t have the energy to get up, let alone form coherent sentences, or even words. He was stuck. Maybe he could just scream. It would probably feel good. Until he got escorted out, anyway.

A rough hand smacked his shoulder.

“Bard! You in there?” Jaskier had been silent too long. His fingers twitched against the smooth clay of the tankard. What if he never answered? What if he just sat here until he withered away to nothing?

“Yeah, sorry, didn’t hear you,” his voice said as he tried to pull a smile onto his face. 

“PLAY. MUSIC.” He pulled out a small coin pouch and jingled the contents in Jaskier’s face.

“MONEY!” Zigrin yelled, carefully enunciating each word as if he were talking to an idiot.

Jaskier ran his fingernail along a crack on the underside of the wood table. He glanced at the merry crowd.

_Fuck him_ , he viciously thought.

He wasn’t sure whom he was referring to.

_Fuck him_ , he thought as he downed his cup and slammed it on the table.

_Fuck him_ , he thought as he stood up and grabbed his lute.

_Fuck him_ , he thought as he smeared a smile on his face and marched past Zigrin to the center of the room.

_Fuck him_ , he thought as he strummed the first notes of a bawdy drinking song.

_Fuck him_ , he thought as he sang himself hoarse. (He really should have done warm-ups before belting his lungs out non-stop for hours. He doesn’t care.)

_Fuck him_ , he thinks as he downs his first, second, and third drink.

By the fourth, he’s managed to stop thinking about anyone in particular.

He’s falling again, and he knows it. The landing is going to be just as bad as any other. Probably worse.

But this time. This time he wasn’t pushed. Not by snotty brothers or scorned lovers or angry Witchers. No. This time it’s his choice.

He’s falling. Falling where, he’s not sure. But falling doesn’t hurt.

No. It’s that sudden stop at the bottom that gets you.

But he’ll land and break tomorrow.

So tonight, he falls.

**Author's Note:**

> I used this website as a reference as to how broken bones were treated before modern medicine, and then I ended up barely even mentioning anything about it. 
> 
> https://exarc.net/issue-2016-2/int/broken-leg-year-1350-treatment-and-prognosis


End file.
